Literature I / Genre Theory
Practice question · Fill in the blanks

Complete the account of genre.

Croce argued that only ______ works exist. Fowler replied that genres are held together by ______ resemblance rather than by necessary conditions, and that a genre is better described by its ______ than by its rules. Bakhtin added that the ______ is the only major genre still developing.

Word bank: individual · family · exemplars · novel · epic · definitions

Hints
  1. The nominalist position is that only particulars exist.
  2. The genre that absorbs and parodies all the others is the one still growing.
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Croce argued that only individual works exist. Fowler replied that genres are held together by family resemblance rather than by necessary conditions, and that a genre is better described by its exemplars than by its rules. Bakhtin added that the novel is the only major genre still developing.

Why

The four blanks reconstruct the argument's repair: the nominalist objection is answered not by producing a better definition but by changing what kind of thing a genre is taken to be.

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